10.1 King Hammurabi of Babylon

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King Hammurabi of Babylon

 King Hammurabi of Babylon  was destined for kingship since time immemorial, when two powerful gods, Anu and Enlil, entrusted to a third god, Marduk, control over destiny, on Earth as in heaven. At that time, too, the gods set Babylon above all other lands, and its rule was made everlasting. Here is how Hammurabi describes himself on an inscribed black basalt stele we have come to call the Code of Hammurabi: At that time, to give happiness to the people, Anum and Enlil pronounced my name "Hammurabi," me, the pious and god-fearing ruler, to decree equity in the land, to eradicate the wicked and the evil so that the powerful might not oppress the powerless, to rise like Shamash and illumine the land for the black-headed (people). Primordial selection, self-praise, and dedication to justice combine readily in Mesopotamian tradition: before Hammurabi at least two kings, Ur-Nammu of Ur (III) and LipitIshtar of Isin, cover the same ground, albeit more succinctly, in the prologues to legal prescriptions they issued for their own people. If we treat the three components of such sentiments separately, we may note that the first two items-divine preference and boast-are quasi-formulaic in Mesopotamian monumental royal inscriptions; indeed they are featured in inscriptions of rulers who, we now know, had every reason to be modest about themselves. That these two elements seem to us more apgOl propriate to Hammurabi is doubtless because in books on world history, on the art of antiquity, on the evolution of consciousness, or on the spirit or ethics of law, we have long since conceded to this Babylonian king the third attribute: champion of justice. Indeed, "Hammurabi" and "Lawgiver" have come to be practically synonymous in most modern publications. BABYLON Hammurabi, who ruled from 1792 to 1750 BCE, came to the throne almost a hundred years after his ancestor Sumu-abum established his dynasty at Babylon in 1894. At that time Babylon was no major power, but its political history went back at least to the time of the Agade (Akkadian) Dynasty. One of its kings, Shar-kalisharri, built a temple to the deities Annunitum and II-aba in Babylon. During the Ur III period diverse persons were appointed ENSi, "governor," of Babylon. The name of the city was written KA..DINGIR. (RA) in Sumerian, equivalent to bab ilim in Akkadian, meaning "God's Gate," a name it held throughout its history. Whether or not "God's Gate" is itself folk etymology on a very ancient and no-longerunderstood name is still under discussion. During Hammurabi's time, Babylon was also known in written form as TIN.TIR, and there is a History and Culture "Hammurabi" or "Hammurapi"? There is still a debate on how to read the king's name, and for this reason you will often find two spellings: "Hammurapi" and "HammurabL" It is generally accepted that the name contains two elements: hammu and rap/bi. The issue has gotten complic~ted because some would treat the name as Babylonian (East Semitic) and others as Amorite (West Semitic). As the first element is undoubtedly West Semitic, the second should also be treated as such. But, at this point the problems mushroom. The cuneiform script itself was invented for Sumerian and adapted for Akkadian, so it is not well suited to represent a number of consonants that occur in Semitic languages. Scribes use five to six different cuneiform signs to write the name, most often spelling it ha+am+mu+ra+bi. The sign that we transcribe h"a represents a number of Semitic phonemes am~ng which were /:tet (a voiceless pharyngeal) and cayin (a voiced pharyngeal). The difference between them, however, is significant because the "hammu-" element would mean "heat" (hence "Sun") if the first consonant was heard as a het (but possibly also "father-in-law"), but "people, nation" or "paternal uncle, kinsman" if heard as an cayin. For the second element of the name, "mighty, vast" would be its meaning if read -rabi, but something to do with healing if read -rapi. In older literature, the tendency was to differ on the meaning of the first element (hence "Sun" or "[Divine] Kinsman") but to understand the second element as -rabi. But because some scholars conlikelihood that before the Agade period, it had a name that was pronounced *Baballr but written BAR.KI.BAR. In Hebrew the city was called babel, allegedly because God "confounded (balal) , the speech of the whole earth" (Genesis 11:9); but we get our own name for the city from the Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, where it was written babylon. Babylon sat astride the Arakhtum-either a branch of the Euphrates or the great river itself before it shifted its route-and its soil could be among the most fertile in the ancient world if constantly worked and watered. Its ruins are divided among a number of tells that are now partially walled-off for display to tourists visiting Iraq; but the immense remains that are still 902 nected the Babylonian Hammurabi with a king of Shinar named Amraphel (Genesis 14), they opted for -rapi as the second element. When documents in alphabetic cuneiform were recovered from Ugarit (Ras Shamra) in the 1930S, a number of its kings of the second half of the second millennium were seen to be named cmrp, and this spelling was retrojected on the name of the famous king of Babylon, thus leading many to read his name cammu + rapi, meaning "The (Divine) Kinsman/Uncle heals." This interpretation is possible; but in this chapter (as in the Cidlizations of the Ancient Near East reference set), the traditional "Hammurabi" is kept because there is no reason to assume that in different cultures names with homonymic components must have the same meaning. Moreover, Mesopotamian scribes exclusively used the sign for the syllable -bi in "Hammurabi" (as almost always in other names with -rabi) even when they had another sign for -pi. In the West, in Alalakh (modem Tell Atchana), scribes would sometime use GAL, the Sumerian word meaning "vast, large," instead of the -rabi element in "Hammurabi." Finally, in Babylonian traditions, presumably closer to a truer understanding of the meaning of the name, "Hammurabi" was understood as kimta rapastu, "Vast Nation," again favoring -rabi as the second element. Moral: It is all right for people to use either spelling, provided that they not become dogmatic about their choice. to be seen there are those of first millennium